#ewew cooks Pan-Fried Pork Meatballs/Patties Many Ways

Ah, pork meatballs or patties is one of the most welcomed dishes on our table.....a dish that everyone likes, so it obviously becomes a dish that's cooked regularly in my household.  It's great eaten with rice (along with other dishes) or as a snack on its own (when or if there are leftovers).

Not only are meatballs cooked frequently in my household, they're also posted often on my blog as I've showcased them in many of my dishes, some of which include sweet and sour meatballs, spaghetti and meatballs, meatballs with potatoes and baked meatballs.

My meatballs recipe has always been the same with the usual 3 ingredients of pork mince, onions and spring onions (besides egg and cornflour, of course) but, since I make this all the time, I recently started to experiment with other ingredients (so that it's not the same old boring meatball) and they came out tasting great even with just 2 ingredients.

The first one is the ever popular Pork Meatballs with Salted Fish.  You'd find this commonly sold at chap fan stalls though it's usually in the form of a salted fish pork patty (ham yue chee yoke paeng) rather than meatballs.

These pork meatballs/patties were made with just pork mince and salted fish.  For this, you'll need the ikan masin tenggiri masam or salted mackerel fish which I bought from NSY Trading (through Shopee) for the first time.  I found the salted fish fresh and fragrant, so I was pretty happy with the quality.

Since we're using salted fish here, there's not much need for any other seasoning except perhaps some white pepper.  I then use egg and cornflour to bind the mixture together into a (workable) paste and form them into balls (or more like lightly flattened mini patties).

The salted fish can be treated in two ways (you can choose either way).  Some would add the raw salted fish directly into the minced pork though it's a bit difficult to tear apart/separate the salted fish (in its raw state)...so I used a pair scissors to help me snip them into smaller pieces before I mixed them in with the pork mince.

Others would pan-fry the salted fish first before adding to the mince.  This way the cooked salted fish is much easier to handle/mash up.  The lazy me did the first method and regretted my choice soon after.  Next time I would just cook the salted fish first coz handling raw salted fish left my fingers smelling like salted fish after...like a long time after....lol.

End result....saltish but absolutely fragrant little morsels of deliciousness that you can't help but pop one (or two) into your mouth as soon as they're fried! ;)

For my next meatball recipe, I used one of my favourite fragrant vegetables (coriander or Chinese parsley) or is that a garnishing?  You won't find many lovers of this (certainly not my son) but if you love coriander (like I do), this Pork Meatballs with Coriander is really simple but good.

You just need to chop up some coriander, stalks and all, and mix them up with the pork mince.  This one I didn't even bother to use egg and cornflour.

The coriander brings a truly fresh and fragrant flavour to the meatballs.  If you're a fan of coriander, try this simple combination and you'd be very pleased with the results.

Of course when I make this, I have to make it with another type of meatball.  So, for my third option, I experimented with a combination of pork mince and dried shredded cuttlefish, you know, the same ones you'd use to fry with jicama/yam bean (or sengkuang) in a dish like jiu hu char.

You can get this from any dried goods seller but make sure you get good quality ones.  I would use them to fry vegetables (like cabbage or cucumber too) as it imparts a fragrant flavour to the vegetables.  I would also use them to flavour soups when not using dried cuttlefish heads.

If it's good enough to flavour soups, it's good enough to flavour meatballs.  You know those commercially produced pork meatballs that have dried cuttlefish studded in them, they taste extra good, so that was the thought behind this.

Just finely chop the shredded dried cuttlefish (or snip it with a pair of scissors) and mix that into the minced pork.  I added some finely minced carrot just because I had them (you can totally omit this).  Again, I skipped the egg and cornflour.

For seasoning, you can use a combination of soy sauce, oyster sauce (not too much of these two though as it'll darken the meatballs considerably when fried), salt and white pepper...or even garlic powder, onion powder, chicken powder, anything you like.

You can just imagine the fragrance emitted by those finely chopped shredded dried cuttlefish once it's fried. Yet another winner! ^_~

So, the next time you're bored with your usual preparation of meatballs, you have these three options to add to your repertoire of meatballs to cook at home if your family happens to be a big fan of meatballs (like mine).  They all taste wonderful in their own way! ^o^